Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Travel: Tom's Palette @ Shaw Tower, Beach Road, Singapore

Our second day during our recent Singapore trip was a day of pure overindulgence and bursting at the seams, from our morning Katong laksa hunt and soon after, our Thai food lunch date with my friend Suk Kwan. At 2pm, after lunch, we were too full to go on any further, but Suk Kwan lured us in with Tom's Palette, a small, simple ice-cream parlour just opposite our lunch venue Ah Loy Thai in Shaw Tower.

Tom's Palette is owned and founded by ex-engineer, Chronos (no, his name is surprisingly not Tom!) Chan and his wife Eunice. What's impressive is that the ice cream is all homemade from scratch, but even more mind-blowing, is the insane array of flavours that they have.

There's your usual (well, these days it's certainly usual) like Coffee, Green Tea and Mango, but... also other insane flavours like Apple Pie, Sarsi, Lavender, and one aptly named Savoury Crunch. Why? Because it contains potato crisps in it!

Adam and I stood there for ages trying to decide on just two flavours each (an absolute agony!) from the 27 fun, wacky flavours available. Hats off though, to the patient staff who were more than willing to give us sample after sample, without us even asking. With each sample, they explained to us the key ingredients, the kind of flavours we would taste/smell - all of which, I felt was great service on their part.

Some of those we sampled that really stood out:

Lavender - Now, there was a point in time where Lavender was regularly making its rounds in our dessert scene here in KL, but I had never tried it so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. "Umm, this hits you quite strongly at your first taste," the guy behind the counter forewarned me. I took a teensy taste, and whoooooshh, it hit me, the strong sweet fragrance of lavender, only on my tongue for once instead of through my nose. It was rather interesting, but not something I'd enjoy a whole scoop of! Adam likened it to eating air freshener, don't mind him :p

Savoury Crunch - Potato chips in ice cream!? I imagined this to be a nostalgic taste since I grew up eating my McDonald's fries with vanilla ice cream. It turned out to be a sweetish, savoury-ish concoction with bits of chip, but while I was expecting more crunch, the bits were mainly very soft. Wonder if there's a way to keep them crispy and crunchy even after all that mixing?

Salted Egg Yolk - You know how some people nibble on their slice of mooncake, trying to keep the yolk, the best part for last? If you're one of those then this flavour is definitely for you. Sweet yet salty and rich, there's also a pleasant grainy salted egg yolk aftertaste. This flavour reminds me of those lao sha (runny salted egg yolk custard) buns you get in Hong Kong dim sum places, only less sweet, more salty.

Sarsi - Very yummy, much like a sarsi float, with vanilla ice cream!

Melt & Sizzle - This contains bits of chocolate that contain bits of sizzle candy in them (remember those?). The candy will dance and sizzle all over your tongue, despite being engulfed in creamy ice cream. A fun sensation that kids will definitely love. :D

Apple Pie - Love the bits of crumbly pie in the ice cream, but a bit too much cinnamon for my liking. There will be others who love it though!

Extracted from the Tom's Palette website

Some more of their quirky, insane flavours that we didn't get to see/try! Chronos Chan & team come up with a new flavour every month, so this probably isn't even an all-encompassing list of Tom's Palette's flavours. Some interesting flavours that I would really love to try - Ginseng, Red Wine, Caramelised Onions (!!!), Loh Han Guo, and the one Suk Kwan swears by, the Pineapple Tart. Definitely making this a must for the next time we're in Singapore again!

(On their Facebook, they recently also had a Mango Sticky Rice flavour of the month! /drools)

In the end, I finally settled for a medium cup (SGD $4) consisting of the Salted Caramel Cheesecake, a perfect marriage of flavours between sweet, salty and slightly cheesy, and the Granny's Favourite, cookie dough and malted bits in a chocolate-y base. Both were oh-so-decadent and creamy!

Adam also had the Granny's Favourite, and he chose the Milk Ice Cream as his other flavour, a sweet fresh milky flavour.

Although, what really ticked him off was how much ice cream he got compared to me. :p No prizes for guessing which belonged to who!

The texture of the ice cream is excellent; rich, creamy and dense, and one thing's for certain, Tom's Palette doesn't scrimp on ingredients (the Granny's Favourite was full of cookie dough, the Apple Pie flavour had lots of pie bits, everything tastes like fine ingredients had been used). It does melt rather quickly, but that's due to their promise of no stabilisers in their ice-cream.

Besides just ice-cream, Tom's Palette serves some fresh hand-crafted waffles as well. To top it off, they also offer ice-cream making classes, which are available for corporate booking.

(Sounds like a fun team-building activity - seeing who can come up with the best flavour, then seeing who can polish off the ice cream the quickest, perhaps? Something that demands true teamwork. :D)

Tom's Palette is definitely a place to visit for some top-notch ice-cream, and top-in-class innovation in flavours. What's there not to love?

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